Ex-Pakistan PM Imran Khan injured in assassination attempt

Former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan was shot in the shin today when his anti-government protest convoycame under attack in the east of the country in what his aides said was a clear assassination attempt, Reuters reports.

Several others in the convoy were wounded and the information minister said a suspect had been arrested. One party member said there were reports one person had been killed.

“It was a clear assassination attempt. Khan was hit but he’s stable. There was a lot of bleeding,” Fawad Chaudhry, a spokesperson for Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, told Reuters.

“If the shooter had not been stopped by people there, the entire PTI leadership would have been wiped out.”

Local media showed pictures of Khan, 70, waving to the crowd after being evacuated from his vehicle following the shooting.

He was taken to hospital in Lahore after the attack in Wazirabad, nearly 200 kilometres from the capital, Islamabad.

Protesters poured out onto streets in some parts of the country as PTI leaders demanded justice.

Pakistan has a long history of political violence. Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in December 2007 in a gun and bomb attack after holding an election rally in the city of Rawalpindi, next to Islamabad.

Her father and former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was hanged in the same city in 1979 after being deposed by a military coup.

Former cricketer Khan was leading a protest march on Islamabad to demand snap elections. There were hundreds of people in the convoy.

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